The 'Guardians' Could Save Hollywood's Summer, Too — If It Were 'Avatar'

Guardians of the Galaxy is already a hit, but nothing short of a Pandora-sized result will save Hollywood's miserable summer at the box office.

The latest from the franchise machine at Disney’s Marvel Studios could open this weekend to easily more than $75 million and streak past $200 million from theaters in the U.S. and Canada, according to estimates by BoxOffice.com. That would make Guardians the biggest domestic box-office opener ever in August (previous record-holder The Sixth Sense holds the record with $298 million in 1999).

Even so, that's a drop in the bucket from what Hollywood needs to match last year's record summer haul of more than $4.76 billion: To catch up, Guardians would need to generate about $750 million by the time it's out of theaters. Only one film has ever done it: Avatar, which collected $760.5 million in total domestic grosses in 2009.

Doesn't matter how much colorful makeup you put Zoe Saldana in — that's not happening.

A scene from Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy."

Image: Disney/Marvel

In the bigger picture, 2014 hasn't been an altogether horrible year for movies: To bring it up to match box office at this point in 2013, Guardians would need to deliver about $450 million. Even with more than $11 million in Thursday night ticket sales — better even that Captain America: The Winter Soldier — That's not happening either.

"There just hasn't been a breakout blockbuster this summer," Shawn Robbins, an analyst at BoxOffice.com, told Mashable. "The numbers dictate that it will take more than just one movie to make up that much of a shortfall."

Still, Hollywood is counting on Guardians to revive a summer that has seen ticket sales plummet 19 percent from last season, according to researcher Box Office Mojo.

A bad summer can easily sink Hollywood’s entire year. The summer box office, defined as the first Friday in May to Labor Day, is seasonally the second-biggest source of ticket sales after the November to January holiday period. Movies this summer, so far dominated by Transformers: Age of Extinction and Maleficent, are averaging just $22 million in box office sales, the lowest since 1998, according to Box Office Mojo.

Guardians, with a cast led by Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana and Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket, is getting early high praise from film critics and comic book fans alike. With 120 reviews counted as of Thursday evening, the movie had an 89% positive rating at RottenTomatoes.com.

"To see an expensive, big-studio movie freed from creative constraints and directorial cynicism is always a rare and wondrous experience," Elizabeth Weitzman wrote in her review of the film for New York Daily News. "In a season of bloated indulgence, it's also fair to call it a marvel."

Hollywood won't have the same problem next year with highly anticipated sequels The Avengers: Age of Ultron, from Disney's Marvel Studios, and Steven Spielberg's Jurassic World, which will be distributed by Comcast's Universal Pictures.

And to be fair, a couple would-be summer flicks were released too early this year to count.

A scene from "Captain America: The Winter Soldier."

Captain America: The Winter Soldier was in theaters in April, a month before the summer box office race began, and holds the crown as the year’s most successful movie with $258.7 million in ticket sales, according to Box Office Mojo. The animated Lego Movie was released in February and collected the second most with $257.5 million at the U.S. box office.

That means on a year-to-date comparison, box office sales have shrunk a more manageable 6.7 percent compared with last year at this point and 7.4 percent from 2012, according to Box Office Mojo.

If Guardians can help significantly close that gap, Hollywood could be in contention to match, or even exceed, last year’s box office record with successful holiday releases that include director Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar in November and the next Hunger Games and The Hobbit movies in December.

Mashable
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